Whatever one thinks about Conrad Black’s guilt or innocence, there is no doubt that he has proven his claim that America’s legal deck is stacked in prosecutors’ favour: Even before his conviction, he had to endure a genuinely Kafkaesque ordeal of assets being frozen and seized by the FBI, email and phone lines hacked, backroom deals with sleazy witnesses (David Radler, please call your office), and outrageous leveraging of blunderbuss statutes to generate dozens of charges on the basis of tangential procedural indiscretions. The very institution meant to protect innocent people from this machinery of state — the private legal sector — is an old-boys’ club whose members often seem just as concerned with seven-figure paydays as with keeping clients out of jail. The fact that Mr. Black happens to be a famous person makes the claims more credible because, as the author writes, if all this could happen to Conrad Black, it “could happen to anyone, and often does.”
Jonathan Kay, “Conrad Black and his new book: A man in full pay-back mode”, National Post, 2011-09-03
September 3, 2011
QotD: The American judicial system
US troops allegedly handcuffed and executed children in 2006
Wikileaks may have been sitting on a particularly disturbing report:
A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks suggests that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.
The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks’ website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.
But Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.
Claims of American troops committing atrocities were very common, but few of them appear to have been anything other than Al Qaeda propaganda exercises. This may well be another case of this, but the initial investigation implied otherwise:
The original incident report was signed by an Iraqi police colonel and made even more noteworthy because U.S.-trained Iraqi police, including Brig. Gen. Issa al Juboori, who led the coordination centre, were willing to speak about the investigation on the record even though it was critical of American forces.
Throughout the early investigation, U.S. military spokesmen said that an Al Qaeda in Iraq suspect had been seized from a first-floor room after a fierce fight that had left the house he was hiding in a pile of rubble.
But the diplomatic cable provides a different sequence of events and lends credence to townspeople’s claims that American forces destroyed the house after its residents had been shot.
In praise of air conditioning
File this one under “first world problems”. Air conditioning is something that I’ve tended to take for granted . . . until this week, when our air conditioner failed. I should be grateful that the unit managed to last until nearly the end of summer before giving up the ghost, but it’s hard to feel grateful when even sitting still produces profuse sweating.
Even going to the basement isn’t much of a relief. My miniscule wine cellar is in the corner of the basement, and I monitor the temperature there. It’s usually in the range of 17-19 degrees. Yesterday it was 24. <sarc>That’ll help age those wines nicely</sarc>.
Update: Oh, joy: “Today’s weather: A high of 30 C feeling more like 40 C, the humidex advisory continuing. A mix of sun and cloud with scattered showers.”
Update, the second: Even better: “Heat alert issued for Toronto, public encouraged to stay cool, drink lots of fluids and monitor those at risk for heat-related illness.”
Surge in “escort” ads in cities hosting political conventions
It should be no surprise that the cities hosting the Democratic or Republican party conventions have a brief spike of activity in certain businesses:
The sex workers of Tampa, Florida, and Charlotte, North Carolina, can get ready for a spike in business at the end of next summer: the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, respectively, are coming to town. In the last electoral cycle, the political jamborees were held in Denver and Minneapolis — and there seems to have been a coincidental surge in the local market for sex.
The economists Scott Cunningham and Todd Kendall discovered this by examining advertisements in the “adult services” section on Craigslist, the online ad service. (Craigslist has since closed down this section.)
Using postings in Seattle and Philadelphia as a control group — these cities did not have almost 50,000 visitors descending on them for a few days — the economists estimated that advertisements selling sexual services increased by 29-44 per cent in Minneapolis during the Republican visit and 47-77 per cent in Denver when the Democrats arrived. I’m not going to make jokes about oversexed politicians, largely because the majority of visitors appear to have been journalists.
An even more amusing letter was posted to The Economist on the same general topic:
SIR – You note that call girls are being drawn from far and wide to service America’s political conventions (“On the trail”, July 3rd). While standing in line to register for an American Economic Association annual meeting some years ago, I overheard someone remark that the prostitutes of New Orleans look forward to the arrival of economists in town. While glancing at my colleagues in their ill-fitting suits and dragging cardboard suitcases, I heard the following clarification: “It’s their opportunity to take a week off.”
Robin Watson
Berlin
Do celebrities get better treatment from the police?
It was interesting to read in this story about the wife of former Viking tight end Joe Senser, that the police waited for a warrant before searching the vehicle, even though the family had given permission:
Phanthavong, 38, was killed as he was putting gas in his car after it ran out of fuel on the ramp leading from westbound Interstate 94 to Riverside Avenue about 11 p.m. He was head cook at True Thai, a restaurant on nearby Franklin Avenue.
He was hit directly by Senser’s vehicle and propelled into the air, Schwebel said. Blood was found on the parts of the Mercedes left at the scene, according to a search warrant.
Investigators received a call at 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 24 from Nelson indicating he was calling on behalf of the registered owner of the suspected vehicle and the owner’s family.
At their Edina home, the Sensers gave investigators the keys to their 2009 Mercedes ML350 and it was towed to the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office crime lab.
The family gave investigators permission to search the vehicle, but authorities waited until they obtained a search warrant, Nelson said.
This week in Guild Wars 2 news
I’ve been accumulating news snippets about the as-yet-to-be-formally-scheduled release of Guild Wars 2 for an email newsletter I send out to my friends and acquaintances in the Guild Wars community.
Lots of links with folks just catching up from last week’s events at PAX.
